5 ms·

Click bait. It is not a "design limitation," it is a different design choice. Of course highly performant code needs to be aware of the selected architecture.

Click bait. It is not a "design limitation," it is a different design choice. Of course highly performant code needs to be aware of the selected architecture. Nothing to see here.

dang 4y ago
Ok, I've replaced that interpretation with the underlying factual description (32MB TLB) and left the OP's word 'bottleneck' in there. Perhaps there's an interesting discussion to be had about it?
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  Thank you. Fair enough, there may be an interesting discussion lurking here somewhere about GPU architectures and rendering modes. However, Apple has been using this approach since the A11, so it is not new information. The OP assertion that Apple helped the WOW devs is probably also specious, since the app may have already been optimized (or close to it) for the architecture if they had been following Apple's GPU/Metal programming advice for the last few years. Caches always have limits and abusing those limits often has punitive results.
legalcorrection 4y ago
That's just your opinion. This leaves a ton of performance on the table and saves Apple basically nothing in cost. Many of us would call that a design limitation, even a design flaw.
- olliej 4y ago
  Where do you find that information? I couldn't find anything on apple.com where they detailed the various design tradeoffs they made working on their GPU
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
right, I'm sure that people who write low-level libs will be thrilled to optimize them for 0.1% of the iGPU market
- sircastor 4y ago
  If you’re writing a low-level library, don’t you want it to target specific architectures? Wouldn’t you want the abstraction happening higher up?
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  Curious, where does the 0.1% come from? Apple Mac US market share is over 14% and iPhone market share is over 50%. I get that you are just being a bit hyperbolic, but if a low-level lib ignores the Apple Silicon GPU hardware they are ignoring a sizable market segment. https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-quarterly-pc-shipment-share-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua... https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
  - desiderantes 4y ago
    I know this is pretty common in hn, but you need to remember that the US is just one country, and not even the most populous country, in this world.
    - bushbaba 4y ago
      Sure but what if the US Engineering population represents a large portion of your paid-user demographics. For a lot of HN's startups this is very much the case.
    - SZJX 4y ago
      That's not very relevant for the purpose of this discussion though. For example, a common stat floating around is how iPhone has 20% market share around the world but provides 80% of in-app revenue, which is what businesses care about.
    - boardwaalk 4y ago
      0.1% isn't close to the truth worldwide either, so it's inaccurate regardless.
fulafel 4y ago
Those are synonymous terms with different spins. The bottleneck in getting software to run fast on GPUs is usually the performance engineering on the code and additional hoops and pitfalls of the platform substract from the real world performance users in practice will see. Yes, of course you can always say it's not "highly performant code" then... but it's more important to run apps well than benchmarks.

Click bait. It is not a "design limitation," it is a different design choice. Of course highly performant code needs to be aware of the selected architecture. Nothing to see here.

dang 4y ago

Ok, I've replaced that interpretation with the underlying factual description (32MB TLB) and left the OP's word 'bottleneck' in there. Perhaps there's an interesting discussion to be had about it?

dev_tty01 4y ago
Thank you. Fair enough, there may be an interesting discussion lurking here somewhere about GPU architectures and rendering modes. However, Apple has been using this approach since the A11, so it is not new information. The OP assertion that Apple helped the WOW devs is probably also specious, since the app may have already been optimized (or close to it) for the architecture if they had been following Apple's GPU/Metal programming advice for the last few years. Caches always have limits and abusing those limits often has punitive results.

legalcorrection 4y ago

That's just your opinion. This leaves a ton of performance on the table and saves Apple basically nothing in cost. Many of us would call that a design limitation, even a design flaw.

olliej 4y ago
Where do you find that information? I couldn't find anything on apple.com where they detailed the various design tradeoffs they made working on their GPU

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

right, I'm sure that people who write low-level libs will be thrilled to optimize them for 0.1% of the iGPU market

sircastor 4y ago
If you’re writing a low-level library, don’t you want it to target specific architectures? Wouldn’t you want the abstraction happening higher up?
dev_tty01 4y ago
Curious, where does the 0.1% come from? Apple Mac US market share is over 14% and iPhone market share is over 50%. I get that you are just being a bit hyperbolic, but if a low-level lib ignores the Apple Silicon GPU hardware they are ignoring a sizable market segment. https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-quarterly-pc-shipment-share-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua... https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
- desiderantes 4y ago
  I know this is pretty common in hn, but you need to remember that the US is just one country, and not even the most populous country, in this world.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Sure but what if the US Engineering population represents a large portion of your paid-user demographics. For a lot of HN's startups this is very much the case.
  - SZJX 4y ago
    That's not very relevant for the purpose of this discussion though. For example, a common stat floating around is how iPhone has 20% market share around the world but provides 80% of in-app revenue, which is what businesses care about.
  - boardwaalk 4y ago
    0.1% isn't close to the truth worldwide either, so it's inaccurate regardless.

fulafel 4y ago

Those are synonymous terms with different spins. The bottleneck in getting software to run fast on GPUs is usually the performance engineering on the code and additional hoops and pitfalls of the platform substract from the real world performance users in practice will see. Yes, of course you can always say it's not "highly performant code" then... but it's more important to run apps well than benchmarks.